


The secret and the obscure

by Kes



Series: Thor 2 Rewritten: The Shaded Tree [8]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 15:24:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2274864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kes/pseuds/Kes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life doesn't stop when a friend takes off for Asgard, and there is still research to be done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The secret and the obscure

“When Ms. Foster gets back, we will of course release all her equipment,” the man on the phone says.

Darcy rolls her eyes. “That’s Dr. Foster, and yeah, sure, but it’ll be like three weeks, I remember last time. And some of it was damaged. I told you, nowhere in the funding agreements is there anything about research trips offworld, and the documents name me as a member of the team and as a suitable guardian for all our data and equipment in Dr. Foster’s absence.” She makes a face down the phone; she, too, has learned more than she ever wished to know about shady spy agencies.

“This is a question of international security, and with your record –”

“That’s not the point in question,” she snaps. “The point is, I am named as part of this research team, I use this equipment myself to get the data you and Dr. Foster need, and you do not have the right as per our agreement to remove any of this stuff. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have readings that need to be taken at nine precisely.”

The man huffs. “We’ll be in touch,” he says, and she puts the phone down.

“I bet you will, you bunch of paternalist baboons. And if you’ve got this place bugged, you deserve to have heard that.”

Back in the living room, she is just in time to catch Ian sprinting guiltily back to the couch. “Who’s a bunch of paternalist baboons?” he asks. “I wasn’t listening in.”

“The people who fund us.” The layers of the secrecy agreement are like Inception. You can tell these people this, and with these people you can go deeper, and sometimes you really need to go deeper with someone but you can’t. “Any luck with Erik?” She’s worried about him. They’ve been in England two weeks and no sign of him. Either he’s avoiding them, or he’s in trouble, surely.

“He’s not answering his phone and I can’t get an address. I sent a letter care of his university department, but they wouldn’t give me his details themselves. Do you work for the FBI? I thought I might be a spy once, but my mum said I wasn’t subtle enough.”

“I cannot imagine you as a spy,” she says. She can’t even imagine him as a suit, like one of Coulson’s cronies. “But they’re not cool – did you know they stole my – my friend’s iPod?”

“Really?”

“Swear on my life. She got it back, but it was scratched. Come and help me with this thing.”

‘This thing,’ draws on other instruments on the roofs of several of London’s academic institutions and measures five different background fields in four dimensions, which is why Darcy has to do it at nine every morning – which she only grumbles about a bit, given that Jane tore a wage for her out of SHIELD four months ago – and moving it on your own requires a knack she has never managed to acquire. Once it’s set up on the balcony, she takes the same set of readings as always. There’s been change, for the first time since they’ve come here.

“Can you make anything of this?” she says, and beckons him over to have a look. Ian, at least, has a background in the sciences – though she thinks she’s gained a nose for the significant.

“I dunno,” he answers. “Looks like they’re responding to some change we can’t see.”

“Yeah, I mean, something’s changed or they wouldn’t have, but... This thing should get something for the origin if it isn’t literally extradimensional, and I am not up for more creepy death aliens, especially not in the same city I’m in.”

“Let’s try and find Dr. Selvig.”

“Again. Yeah, he should know about this. If only you could, like, call Asgard. You think they’ve got wi-fi?”

He grips the other side and together they start heaving it inside. “I dunno.”

“Probably not. They might have something like the internet but the technology’s too specific to assume they’ll work together.”

“Still don’t believe I met Dr Foster. And Thor. Is that secret too? I signed like, six layers of secrecy agreements to work here. They ran a background check. I suppose you’ve signed more, since you’re not telling me everything.”

“They say it’s a matter of international security,” she replies. “Sometimes when they’re feeling pompous they call it interstellar security.”

“I just wish I knew what we’re doing, you know, properly.” With a thump he sits down on the couch and picks up his notebook full of figures. “I keep making calculations and coming up with conclusions and I know I don’t have the full picture so they’re probably wrong or irrelevent, and then it’s like, what’s the point of me being here?”

“What, my company isn’t enough?” It probably wouldn’t bother her – but then, she isn’t an astrophysicist, not properly. What if she was asked to draw up a program of political action without all the data? “No, I get it. Not much I can do. Jane’s the, uh, the funders-wrangler around here.” If it wasn’t for the lingering fear that they had missed bugs on their sweep of the house, she would tell him more.

“Yeah. I mean, it’s worth it for me – working with Dr Foster is huge, I still can’t believe I actually got in, but I don’t like feeling useless, it makes it sort of hollow.”

She shrugs and sits down in a stray computer chair, remembers how it was at first. Simmering, mutual resentment – Darcy had applied for tons of placements and got only one answer, Jane had wanted a science major and got her – it never boiled out into open warfare, because both of them knew they had to make the best of it, but it still wasn’t fun. Feeling useless and inadequate, especially when Erik turned up and there was someone who got it for Jane to talk to. Then New Mexico happened, and that had sparked her interest, and that, in turn, had helped fix the relationship with Jane. It’s easier to understand someone whose passion drives their life when you share it, and once they understood each other better, they started being better to each other. Now she can’t imagine leaving. “I know your stuff slots in fine,” she says, choosing her words carefully. “I don’t really understand how, Jane does, but it does.”

Rather than continue the conversation, she enters the data they gathered earlier, and fires up her own desktop with a grin. The phone call from SHIELD has given her an idea, and, well, their more normal searches aren’t yielding anything. In New Mexico, she had managed to plant a false identity card in SHIELD’s records. (Sure, they’d seen through it, but that wasn’t the point; it is hackable, is the point, though she hopes that they haven’t tightened up too much after all that Rising Tide material.) If anyone would know where Erik was and what the hell he was playing at, it would be them – even if they’d reassigned him to Antarctica or something. _They better not have, he’s been screwed around enough_.

“I’m raiding the ice-cream,” Ian announces behind her.

“Sure, get me some,” she calls back. The enormous chest freezer is full of it, along with cheap frozen food that can be slapped on an oven tray and left to cook, as long as Darcy sets a timer to get it out (Jane forgets, and no-one wants a repeat of the fire alarm incident). It looks like turning into a boring morning; hacking is less fun once the initial thrill of ‘I shouldn’t be here,’ wears off. It could be worse, though. She could be spending the morning in the mind-numbing tedium of their findings files, making sure that it all cross-references and checking for anomalies and so on. If only she could hand that on to Ian...


End file.
